Alright, alright. I'll post a year end list. Jeez. Peer pressure in the blogsphere is incessant. First though, a bit of business. We have a new resident in The Village, John August. He's the screenwriter of two of my favorite films GO and Big Fish, plus the Charlie's Angels films and the new Tim Burton remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I found John's blog through Lee Goldberg and was amazed that someone of his caliber and success would take the time to answer so many questions about screenwriting...and he gets some real stupid questions. Screenwriting has always been a sideline joy of mine.

While prose is my first love and will always get the most attention, I love movies and it only seems natural that one day I'd translate that to my writing world. I've noticed most prose writers of my generation do a fair amount of work as screenwriters in addition to their novels and short stories. In fact, more than one agent has told me to write my first novel Lunchbox Hero as a screenplay as well, to see if I can generate more interest. I plan on doing that after I'm done with the first draft of Book Two. So enjoy John's blog and now, onto the lists.

Well I just mentioned I see a lot of movies so let's start there. I see a ton of movies and rarely do I go see something that I know I'm not going to like so there are few real stinkers and it's hard to narrow the several I really liked to a manageble list so here are the three films I really liked, the ones I saw several times in the theaters and will probably see again in DVD.

1. My best movie of the year, hands down is Garden State. I love Zach Braff in Scrubs and loved him in this movie. It's a very writing and character driven movie and I fell in love with Natalie Portman every time I saw it. There are great visuals like a knight walking through a home kitchen and a houseboat at the bottom of a canyon in New Jersey. Just all around great stuff. The soundtrack is very cool too.

2. Right up there with Garden State is The Incredibles. Everybody I know liked it and every top ten list includes it so I don't need to get real in depth, just loved it, but again, I'm a sucker for anythign superhero.

3. Now, nobody else liked it, but I loved Jersey Girl. I love Kevin Smith, I love Ben Affleck and I really love Liv Tyler, and there were no animal cracker love scenes. Ben Afflect is in a role that suits him well while Liv Tyler stretched herself a bit. They have a discussion about sex, porn and masturbation that made me spit my popcorn out. And the little girl is adorable and George Carlin plays one of the best roles of his life. I loved all of Kevin Smith's dirty, vulger and pop culture laced previous films and I also loved his first grown up effort. I'm very excited to see what he does next.

Runners up include Blade:Trinity, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Punisher and Team America:World Police

BOOKS

I don't read as many books as I see movies, but there is even less of a chance of me reading a bad book than seeing a bad movie. However there was one disappointment for me, but first the tops.

1. The Narrows by Michael Connelly- I think Connelly is one of the best we have writing out there now. He's as literary as Lehane and as popular as writers with half his talent. This ranks as the second best Bosch book ever with only A Darkness More than Night being my favorite. I love inside jokes and crisscrossing universes and Connelly deftly handles both in Bosch's last case as a PI. I'm going to miss the first person Bosch voice but I'm very much looking forward to him back on the force with The Closers because it's the only good procedural series I really like.

2. The Guards by Ken Bruen- Again, this has appeared on several lists, I can't do it any justice so just "wow."

3. The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Letham- This is the guy I would love to be. His use of pop culture doesn't just spew forth to set the tone of time, it's an intregal part if the story. This book follows two boys growing up in Brooklyn in the 70s. From there it encompasses the 80s and 90s as well with the trained eye of a guy who was on the outside looking in. I'll say it again, I wish I could be Jonathan Letham

Runners up: Absent Friends by S.J. Rozan, Rain Storm by Barry Eisler, Double Play by Robert B. Parker, Bad Move by Linwood Barclay and Prince of Thieves by Chuck Hogan...and Thief's Dozen by Donald Westlake.

Now about that disappointment. I had very high expectation for Tonight I Said Goodbye by Michael Koryta and I probably shouldn't have. The kid is only 22. When I think about what I was writing when I was 22 I'm in awe he could even finish it, let alone publish it. Now don't get me wrong, it's an enjoyable book but I don't think it rises above standard PI fare. I think people have mainly focused on Koryta's age and let the book's weaknesses slide. If it had been written by a 45 year old I don't think it would have gone over as well. The dialogue is what particularly stuck out to me as the biggest fault. It was wooden and at points hilariously bad. The banter between Perry and Pritchard is as cliched as it comes and frankly I didn't see a need for two PIs when they could have been combined into one more well rounded detective. That said, I'm looking forward to the next book. I think he'll probably advance from the first to the second book more than others might but again, I may be setting the bar too high. He'll only be 23...

And for CDs...American Idiot, best album of the year. Big and Rich's Horse of a Different Color comes in at a close second.

I owe Dave White an apology, and he didn't even know it was coming. Lately I've been berrating him for wasting valuable writing energy on short stories instead of his novel. Well I've gone and done the same thing. I was hit by a couple of great story ideas and just had to take the time to write them. The first is an idea that I think might finally work for a superhero noir story I've been wanting to write and the second is for a supersecret project that will be detailed in this blog at the end of next month. Stay tuned.

So Dave, I'm sorry. And get your digs in now because I'm deleting this at the end of the day. :)

HI MOM!

So I just recently found out that my mom reads this blog and was not amused by my swearing and other topics of debautchery. I have a close relationship with my mom and my entire family and I respect her concerns, but several of my stories and novels have some pretty rough stuff in them and I think it adds to the story and don't plan on changing them. I guess in a perfect word, my family would support me and my writing without ever actually reading any of it, but I know that's not the case. So how do you other authors handle this kind of stuff with people who are close to you? Does anybody's mom, or grandma, or pastor, or priest, or wife, or husband, or kids etc... not approve of what they write? How do you maintain a good relationship with that person without scraping the projects they disapprove of?

Okay boys and girls, we're going to cover a lot today so try and keep up. First, here's the Christmas haul report: gift certificates, cash, clothes, candy, Family Guy DVD set, a framed Sopranos poster, and a Spiderman mug set. I wrote a goofy little story for my family with lots of inside jokes that went over well on Christmas Eve. No, I won't post it.

THE PHANTOM MENACE

A confession: I'm a theater and choir geek from way back. I was in high school at the peak of the mega musicals (Phantom, Les Miz, Cats, Miss Saigon) and I remember at every party and friend's house at least once we'd all end up around the piano singing showtunes. I've seen a good share of Broadway shows and finally got to see Phantom a few years ago with my family in Toronto. Paul Stanley of Kiss was playing the Phantom role, it was amazing. So when the movie version finally came around, I was quickly in line to see it. And I was blown away. While most of it is a straight filmed version of the musical there are scenes at the very beginning and at the end that were cool on stage but were spectacular when done on film.

During the overture as the chandelier lights up and the opera house is brought back to its former glory through a series of wonderful morphing shots I got chills. And at the end, the burning of the opera house was much more bombastic than it could have been on stage. Other than enjoying all of the songs again, my biggest joy of the movie was being able to follow the story more clearly. Because the stage show uses a fairly minimal set it's hard to tell where and when many of the scenes are taking place. Not so in the movie.
I only have too complaints. The Phantom's voice was kind of weak in the first half as was his character and they made the Phantom's bed look like something from a Vegas honeymoon sweet. Other than that, I give this movoe five masks.

ONCE BITTEN THRICE SHY

I've seen the future of Lunchbox Hero and his name is Ryan Reynolds. From his role on my guilty pleasure show Two Guys, a girl, and a Pizza Place, to his stint as eternal student Van Wilder, I've always thought Reynolds had the pop culture savy and naive, yet snarky, attitude needed to pull off my lead series character Kenny Shepard. His role as Hannibal King in Blade:Trinity kicked this all up to the Nth degree. This was by far my favorite Blade movie and one of my favorite superhero movies. I'm a sucker for a superhero movie, good or bad. While I enjoyed Spiderman and The X-Men like everyone else, I also love Daredevil, Spawn and The Punisher (the new one, not the 80's Dolph Lundgren stinker---nobody liked that). I also think the 1989 Batman movie is one of the best superhero movies ever made, though I'm giddy with anticipation over Batman Begins.

Anyway, back to Blade. This one was solid action and humor. They knew just how far to push the horror elements without letting the gross take over like it did in the second one. But the real highlight of this movie is Reynolds and Jessica Biel as Whistler's daughter Abigail. Yowza. For an action movie set in that ever popular "not to distant future" it's a bonus that we get to see a cool sword fight and some sweet archery. And Parker Posy as a sexy vampire leader only made the movie more enjoyable. Good stuff.

To be continued...

This is a filler post. I have a headache and I'm going to bed. But later I'll be discussing my experiences at The Phantom of the Opera and Blade:Trinity, my Christmas haul, my mother, and an apology to Dave White. Join me then...

Five channels, that's the extent of the Genesee County radio market. There's two country stations that play the top ten country songs all day long, there's the hip hop station that plays the top ten crap songs all day long and then there's the two classic rock stations which rotate between Stairway to Heaven, Back in Black, and Freebird all day long. Of course now all any of the stations are playing is Christmas music, yet I can't ever hear my favorite Christmas song of all. So as my holiday present to the readers of this blog, the lyrics to the best Christmas song ever: The Kinks' Father Christmas

When I was small I believed in santa claus
Though I knew it was my dad
And I would hang up my stocking at christmas
Open my presents and I’d be glad
But the last time I played father christmas
I stood outside a department store
A gang of kids came over and mugged me
And knocked my reindeer to the floor

They said:Father christmas, give us some money
Don’t mess around with those silly toys.
We’ll beat you up if you don’t hand it over
We want your bread so don’t make us annoyed
Give all the toys to the little rich boys

Don’t give my brother a steve austin outfit
Don’t give my sister a cuddly toy
We don’t want a jigsaw or monopoly money
We only want the real mccoy

Father christmas, give us some money
We’ll beat you up if you make us annoyed
Father christmas, give us some money
Don’t mess around with those silly toys

But give my daddy a job ’cause he needs one
He’s got lots of mouths to feed
But if you’ve got one, I’ll have a machine gun
So I can scare all the kids down the street

Father christmas, give us some money
We got no time for your silly toys
We’ll beat you up if you don’t hand it over
Give all the toys to the little rich boys

Have yourself a merry merry christmas
Have yourself a good time
But remember the kids who got nothin’
While you’re drinkin’ down your wine

Father christmas, give us some money
We got no time for your silly toys
We’ll beat you up if you don’t hand it over
We want your bread, so don’t make us annoyed
Give all the toys to the little rich boys

I like to think that I'm the only person who would title a post about dropping a corpse with a line from the musical Fame. Maybe there's a reason I'm the only one who would do it...

But yes, Houston, we have a body.

At 30 pages and about 9,000 words the first body dropped in book two. It's not who I thought was going to die and it's sooner than I thought somebody would die, but hey, who am I too complain? The corpse has added a nice new dimension to the story and a conflict I set up earlier has now taken on a whole new strain which is nice. In the first book I was so concerned with the one major plot strand and keeping it straight that I never ventured out into subplot territory. This time out it looks like there will be at least two, if not three strong story lines.

Yay me.

That 9000 word mark has been hard to hit lately. The last time I worked on the book, four or five days ago, I dropped off a couple of pages shy of my five page minimum goal. Those two pages have been taunting me all week. There were a couple of days I just didn't feel like writing, but a few times I wanted to write, but I didn't want to get into the rythm and have to shut down again after only two pages. And I really didn't want to go over the two pages and have another dangling page situation so I didn't write. Well last night, after an entire day of distracting myself and drugging myself with Beneadryl so I could fall asleep, I still wasn't tired so I figured knocking off those two pages might be just what I needed to go to sleep. And it was. So now I'm back into even numbers and hopefully should do my five pages today.

This will be my last post from Ann Arbor for a while. I'm heading home to the Flint area for Christmas. At least they have cable and I've got a stack of books to knock out. Retro by Loren D. Estleman, The Back Door Man (Shut up John) Rob Kantner's first Ben Perkins novel and Gates of Eden, a collection of short stories from Ethan Coen.

So I'll quote the great scholar Herschel Krustofsky here and say have a Merry Christmas, Chappy Chanukah, Krazy Kwanzaa, Tip Top Tep and a Solemn and Dignified Ramadan.

I'm been missing the Bouchercon bar scene a lot lately. I live in a college town with enough bars to liquor up the entire university population several times a night without ever visiting the same place twice. There are dive bars, gay bars, nature bars, oriental bars, oxygen bars, tourist bars, martini bars and everything in between. The last couple of days I've made an effort to find a bar of my own. I'm a pub man by heart but the only two real pubs in town are too expensive for a grad student writer so I've made the rounds of places with cheap specials and the potential for high octane flirting and socializing. I'm not a bar rat, I'm not looking for the next score or a one night stand or anything like that, but I'm a social person and I like to be around people every once in a while.

Well I haven't found anything I've liked so far.

The two best bar experiences I've ever had have been at mystery writing conferences and I think this set the bar (no pun intended, at least I don't think so) quite high. My first ever conference bar experience was at Sleuthfest in Fort Lauderdale, FL this past March. That night I might and drank with SJ Rozan and Barry Eisler and several other writers. I made my way from group to group finding people I knew, people I wanted to know and people who just looked interesting. I didn't have to resort to cheesy pick up lines because everyone in the bar shared the same common interests, writing and mysteries.

The best experience so far though was at Lonestar in Toronto the night after the Anthony Awards banquet at Bouchercon. There were a ton of people in there and again I was more social then I'd ever been in my entire life. I made new friends, met some childhood heros and had fun making jokes with Ian Rankin. Again, all of this was made possible because of the shared interest (and let's be honest here, general intoxication) of the crowd. I hit on a sexy pair of booksellers I'd met the previous night at another party, yet in the same bar on any other night, I'd have had no reason to approach them. Unless I'm going to randomly approach every woman I meet in a bar and ask her what her favorite mystery book is and whether she thinks Robert Crais has lost his edge, I'm screwed in the general bar scene.

This is why I need to start my own bar. Just for writers and mystery fans. I could attach them to large mystery bookstores and have theme shots based on the locale and famous mystery writers. For sports fans we'd have a whole collection of Baltimore Ravens games on the tube. It would look like any other bar, but you would know that every person you approached would have at least one common interest. And Donna Moore and I would travel with our imaginary band too all of the locations. This would also be a great place to hold the annual "Drunky" awards.

And I don't care if I had to smuggle it in illegally, we'd have the real Molson, not the import stuff they try to stick us with.

...and it blew me away. This line is from the Foreigner song Jukebox Hero about a kid who buys a pawn shop guitar and goes on to become a rock star. I took a modification of that title for my first novel Lunchbox Hero about a kid who wants to be a PI. This isn't the only illusion to guitarists in the novel. The MC is named Kenny Sheperd, who takes his name from young guitar prodigy Kenny Wayne Sheperd. Sheperd took his traditional blues influences and mixed them with modern rock influences. There's a long history of similarities between the blues and private eye fiction and I see myself with the same ambitions as KWS. I want to take the traditional PI influences and mix them with more modern pop culture influences.

All but a couple of the characters in the novel are named after lead guiatarists. Kenny's boss is Steve Vaughn, named after Stevie Ray Vaughn, a pioneering blues guitarist in the 80's. There's FBI agent Tom Schultz, lead guitarist of the band Boston, Kenny's client Nancy Wilson, guitarist for Heart, Kenny's occassional sidekick Riley King, named after Riley "B.B." King and a rival PI is Saul Hudson named after Saul "Slash" Hudson, lead guitarist from Guns 'n Roses. I've begun compiling a list of guitarists names for future characters, particularly female names. This is my tribute to the unsung heros of rock. Most people know know the names of the lead singer of the big bands, but very few know the lead guitarist.

What this comes to is that I desperately want to be a guitarist. I've owned a couple of guitars over the years and taken some lessons and learned some chords and can even play some songs. But I've never stuck with it. So many things have come easily to me that I find it hard to stick with things that take some effort. I was always hoping that I'd pick up the guitar and suddenly be a prodigy. Never happened. Yet every few years I get the urge again to play. It sticks with me and even when I'm not playing or learning to play I'm listening to the guitar licks in songs and admiring the greats. Last week my friend took me to a blues club for Christmas and the guy playing there was amazing and it got me all riled up again and I went out the next day and started looking at guitars and books and lessons. All of my previous guitars have been acoustic guitars, but most of the music I love and the guitarists I admire mainly use electric guitars. If I get a new guitar in the next couple of weeks, which I may or may not do, it will be an electric. Maybe that's why I never stuck with it, I wasn't playing the kind of guitar I really wanted. I may or may not stick with it this time either, but I'm fairly certain this won't be the last time in my life I'll try.

Otherwise, how else am I going to be invited to join the Rock Bottom Remainders?

I have nothing to say. I haven't felt like writing or reading the last couple of days so I havent worked on my book and I haven't posted here. I took a look at the site that monitors this blog though and noticed the visitors have dropped from an average of 50 a day to just 16 for today and figured the lack of posts probably has something to do with it. So first, let me thank everyone who has taken the time to come by and read or say hi. I can't believe an AVERAGE of 50 people stop by every day. Some days it's been as high as 150 (Thanks Dave!). Anyway, I thought I'd post some of writing to fill the void and was going to post a short short I wrote about a hitman but then I realized I'd already sent it to Jen Jordan at Crimespree and she hasn't gotten back to me on it yet so I don't want to shoot myself in the foot on that. Instead I thought I'd post something from the opening of my new book. So far I like what I have and thought you guys might enjoy it as well. Let me know what you think.

MR. SATURDAY MORNING
Chapter One

"Damn college kids," Saul Hudson said to me.

Saul Hudson is a bail bondsman in Flint, Michigan and my boss. My name is Kenny Shepard and I'm a college student and an apprentice PI. Saul dropped a file folder on my desk and flipped it open for me.

"I don’t care if they skip class, but when they skip court I gotta pay for it. Damn college kids."

"I'm a college kid, why don’t I try and find him," I said.

"Her. And you think I dropped the file on you desk as a present. Of course you're going to find her."

"Your faith in me is very reassuring," I said, flipping through the pages in the folder.

There was a glossy color picture at the back of the folder. It had the surreal formal appearance that only comes with senior pictures, or possibly boudoir photography. The name on the file was Lacy Dalton.

"I know her. She's in my—"

"Then go find her, I'm not here to listen," Saul said.

It was Monday and I didn’t have class with Lacy until Tuesday so I was thinking maybe I should hit her house for info. The address listed under Lacy's name was in a smallish neighborhood of tract homes in Burton, on the outskirts of Flint's city limits. The house was situated sideways on a small plot of land.

There was a rusty and dented red Cadillac up on blocks in the driveway with a newer gold Toyota behind it. As I approached the door, I heard thumping. A black guy in his early 50s weighing close to 300 pounds answered the door wearing a white silk shirt and leather pants. He had a red bass guitar hanging from his neck.

"I'm sorry, I think I've got the wrong house," I said.

The man looked me up and down and cleared his throat.

"Looking for Lacy are ya?"

"Oh, uh, yeah. Lacy Dalton."

"She's my daughter."

I had Lacy's file in my hand and I tried to casually consult it to make sure I wasn't losing my mind. Lacy Dalton was white.

"Adopted daughter," the man said.

"I'm sorry sir. I must—"

"Call me Al, and come on in."

I followed Al into his house as he pulled a huge remote control from his back pocket and turned off the thumping. The inside of the house looked like a Sharper Image store decorated by Frederick's of Hollywood. All of the electronics were silver and included several stacks of stereo equipment, a large screen plasma TV and a full size electronic keyboard. The furniture was black leather accented with silky animal print pillows and blankets and the art on the wall would have looked tacky at Graceland.

"You screwing her?" Al said, sitting down on the floor near a tower of silver amplifiers.

"I've got a class with her. There's sex in it."

I regretted saying it before it was off my lips, but Al continued to plug in his guitar and fiddle with the shiny silver knobs.

"Sex in the class?" He asked.

"No, I mean the class…the class is called Sex, Drugs, and Politics. It's about—"

"Then you know she ain't been around. She ain't been here so I assume she ain't been to class. You bring her
homework or something?"

"Well not really, I'm kind of looking for her," I said.

"So you wanna screw her then?"

"I work for a bailbondsman. She's—"

"How much does she owe?"

I again tried to look at the folder without drawing attention, but Al took the folder from me and thumbed through it. He nodded and made noises with his lips as he read the file, but he didn't say anything.

"If I can get her to court to reschedule her appearance she shouldn't be in too much trouble," I said.

Al still didn’t say anything and, to avoid saying something stupid, I let my gaze wander around the living room taking in more of the details. There was a stack of cds next to one of the silver towers and I could see an Earth, Wind and Fire disc on top.

"That's the way of the world," I said.

"I don't care how bad the world is getting, I wish I could have been a better father."

"No, I meant the cd. Earth, Wind and Fire."

"Oh, right. Good album."

"I like more of their disco albums but I'm strange."

"Mmmm hmmmm."

"So does Lacy have any places she hangs out? Any friends or people I could talk to?"

"As a matter of fact, there is this girl. Goth little freak lives just up the road. She should be home right now, only
goes out at night far as I know."

"Thanks, do you have an address for—"

"I'll drive you over there. I should probably be around for this."

"As long as I can get her to court if we find her. That's the only way I get paid," I said.

"We'll see."

Al took his guitar off and grabbed a red leather jacket with a tiger painted on the back from behind the couch.
When he threw the jacket across his back to put it on, I was pretty sure I saw the butt of a revolver sticking out of his inside pocket. I had a gun too but it was back at the office locked in Saul's desk. I had to ask him before I could take it with me. I didn’t think I'd need it to visit a girl from my class, or her dad. Maybe it was just part of his business.

"So what do you do?" I asked as Al shut and locked the door behind us. He laughed at me and opened the
Toyota with a button on his key chain.

"This is Lacy car?" I asked.

"You think every black guy has a fat Caddy? We don’t buy reliable foreign cars?"

"That's not what I—"

"Lacy has a Blazer. Just like good white girls should have," Al said.

"I wasn't trying to—"

"Follow me over there in your car."

MR. SATURDAY MORNING--Word Count 7,500 Page Count 25
Excerpt Copyright Bryon Quertermous 2004

Ok, I'm posting this after Midnight and technically I finished my 1500 words for the day after Midnight but who freaking cars, right? I did it. I got a late start on it, but I figure if I get up at noon, my day has to last at least until Midnight to make it feel justified. Anyway, that brings the total word count to 6000, I didn't get around to working on it at all yesterday. I was too busy pampering Dave. For those playing along at home that's 20 manuscript pages in TNR 12. This is the place most of my earlier novel attempts fell apart so I'm always glad when I pass this point. As of now I've planted a few good clues and the story's humming along. It should take a hop here into mystery in a few pages. I'm quite pleased and it's always hard pleasuring myself. Wait a minute, that's not what I meant to say. Shit, it's late...

With one day left in the week to go I'm at 4500 words for novel two. I shouldn't have any problems clearing 5K by tommorow. I'm quite pleased with that. I really thought it would take me a few more false starts to get going again but I slipped back into novel mode quite easily. Other than Tuesday, the words have come easily and seem to resemble something nearing suspense. The story is underway quicker than in the first book and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that there will be a corpse here pretty soon.

Also, in the next day or so I will be uneviling a new feature for this blog so keep checking back for updates. Also, I'm in preliminary negotians to take the John, Sarah and Bryon Weasel Spectacular (featuring Angela Lansbury) on the road. Stay tuned for details. :)

Well I'm chugging along nicely on the new book I hit 3300 words today after a valiant session at the Espresso Royale Cafe downtown. I like ER because it is cozier and more intimate than the Starbucks. They have bigger overstuffed chairs and at the other tables they have those big leather office chairs instead of the stupid hardback chairs.

I'm conflicted about the title for this book. I always have to have a working title before starting anything and the working title for this book is MR. SATURDAY MORNING. I like it and it fits the character and it goes well with LUNCHBOX HERO but I don't think it's going to have anything to do with the story in this book. Of course my last book was called WANNABE during the planning stages and the first two drafts.

Okay, maybe I can't spell but that wasn't the reason my story was rejected by the Mississippi Review. Guest Editor Anthony Neil Smith said "there was some nice writing throughout" but in the end rejected it because it was a cop story. That kind of makes sense, these aren't even crooked cops so they probably don't belong in the pulp edition of a magazine. I'm not too heart broken and I'm really happy to at least know one way or the other so I don't have to check my email 100 times a day. And Neil did say "I'm sure you'll have luck with it else where."

So today I'm taking out all of the "fucks" and sending it off to Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. That's right, I'm sending it to a bigger magazine than the one that rejected me, but I think it's a good story and stands a chance of being accepted. I'd feel stupid if I didn't, I'd always wonder if it cuda been a contender.

1000 words. That's a fairly respectable accomplishment for a days work when yesterday I thought I was going to have to write 20-30 pages of utter shit before I got back into the swing of things. Of course it took me most of the day and two dvds to finish it. I think I'm probably the only person to ever rent a Hillary Duff movie and a Dennis Leary disk at the same time. And what's worse is I'm not a weird pedophile, I actually like dorky teen movies. I also found that the audio commentary on movies makes very good background noise for writing.

As far as the quality of the writing goes I think it's pretty good. I reread the first page and a half I wrote yesterday and kind of liked it. That just goes to show how moody writers are. We'll see how good I think today's pages are tommorow. I wonder how much of this is because I switched back to Times New Roman...

Pets or Food was another title I toyed with briefly for this blog. It comes from Michael Moore's documentary "Roger and Me" about my hometown of Flint, Michigan. In one scene Moore interviews a woman selling rabbits as pets or food. The scene became a local highlight and I thought it might be fun to reference Flint in my title. but really, people think I'm sick enough as it is, I don;t need to encourage it any more.

Now, onto the big news: I'm official a cabana boy! This has been a long time in the making and there are so many people to thank...

As for my new novel, well, I got about a page and a half done last night. I switched from Courier back to my favorite Times New Roman. The Courier just looks dumb to me and I think makes it easier to write crap. I think I'm going to have to ease myself back into long form writing and I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to throw out an opening or two before I get into the swing of things but I think I'm up to the task. It's not like I have anything else more pressing going on. So the new page count I'll be aiming for is 266 because TNR averages about 300 words a page. When I'm ready to send it out I'll reformat it to Courier because I still think thats the preferred font of the industry and I'd rather send out a beefy 320 page manuscript anyway.

This will have to keep me busy so I don't contstantly check my email while I wait to hear back about the short story I sent to The Mississippi Review or from the agent who's reading my manuscript.

I had a really long post that was heartfelt introduction to me and my writing, explaining the origins and theories behind this blog, but just as I was about to finish it my computer locked up and I lost the whole thing. It's almost midnight and I still want to get this blog up and running but I'm not sure my heart is in it, I really loved that post. I guess it's your luck that you'll get a shorter version of that soul purging post so Merry Freakin' Christmas, now let's see, where's that "save as draft" button. I may be a monkey, but I'm a monkey who learns his lessons.

Coping with Sanity is a title I've had in my head for quite some time. In the early days of my formation as a writer I was desperate to be a tortured genius. I was living a happy life with a happy family in a happy town. It was disgustingly blah while at the same time I was reading through the school's list of great writers, many of whom were tortured geniuses. The signifigance was not lost on me. During the following years in junior high and high school I held out hope that I would be stricken with some sort of mental illness that would fuel my creative fantasies. I researched mental illness with the fervor of a con man looking for a disease to pass off on a jury. Ultimately I realized I was an above average student with below average grades and a case of chemical depression. By that time though I was aware that I was ill-equipped to do anything else in life but write so I plugged ahead anyway.

I've also toyed with the idea of starting a blog for a while. I wrote humor columns for both of my college newspapers and during my brief stint as a newspaper reporter I wrote several personal essays. I've always been attracted to the personal nature of journal writing and thought a blog might be a neat way to scratch that particular literary itch. After serving as guest host for Sarah Weinman's popular blog for a bit I thought that might be the kick in the pants I needed to get started. What it turned out to be was test driving a BMW to buy a Chevette. No, the only thing that got me into the blogsphere was my strong writer's urge to do anything but start work on my second novel.

I started that book, "Lunchbox Hero" three years ago while I was working as an intern with Bantam Dell. During the years since, I've rewritten the book from scratch three seperate times and I supposse those could count as new books because there wasn't anything in them from the previous books, but it was still the same story. I was learning how to write a novel in the sloppiest, most frustrating and inefficiant way possible. After about a year I started submitting drafts of the novel to editors and agents and received enough positive feedback to keep working at it but I always knew the story wasn't right, I just didn't have the skill to fix it at the time. In June I finally completed the last draft of that book and feel I've done everything with it I can. It's as good as I can get it.

For the last six months I've been exploiting my connections in the industry and building a little word of mouth for the book. It got to the point though where I was in danger of being more known for promoting the book than for writing it. I needed to get to work on the second one before I forgot how and had to start from the beginning again. I've had ideas for the next book in the series bubbling into my head for about a year now and I've been keeping them in a journal on my computer, but there hasn't been enough to really light my fire to start work on it. My first book was on the light side and I know the next time I want to tackle some broader themes and work toward a darker, more mature style.

A couple of months ago I had a few sparks in a row and thought it might be time to get to work. At the same time a couple of short story ideas I've had in my head for a while came together and when I found out the Mississippi Review was doing a pulp issue I decided to first write that story in a dark, pulpy style to get myself back on the writing horse. The story turned out quite nice and I was quite happy to see my writing had improved since my last story and the end of my first novel, I hadn't lost anything.

With my head clear and a strong idea of where I was going with the next book I designated tonight as the night I'd start. I have this thing about starting books on Monday, it makes it easier for me to believe I'm starting fresh, kind of a small scale version of New Year's resolutions. I got home from school, sat down at my computer and BOOM...I knew exactly how I wanted to start my blog.

It's now 12:08 a.m. and I haven't written a damn thing on the novel and I'm sure this won't be the first time. I will however start tommorow, Tuesday be damned. I'll use Courier 12 point font and one inch margins in Microsoft Word and I'll write 10 pages a day until I hit 320 pages. That will be 80,000 words which I think is a good length for a second novel. My first novel barely clocked in at 67,000 words. It's going to messy and sloppy and frustrating but I think I'm going to like it. I don't have an outline, but I have a few key plot points loosely outlined, but I'm sure the final draft, which hopefully will come sooner than 2007, will differ drastically from the first draft.

This damn well better work.

I'll chronicle the adventure here, stick around if you like. Ignore the drunk Brit in the corner playing with the weasel and the dark haired girl fooling around with her sex toys, they're harmless...mostly. There was another girl here who was always on her computer but she went and got a real job. Sucker.